I had my heart stopped and cut open and repaired. Have had many parts biopsied. I have a sneakin' suspicion that my lungs will be the traitorous organs. But, cough cough, until then, I will live life and wear a respirator. And shorts.

When young you bargain to increase your strength and use that strength appropriately. Just the reverse in old age. Every year, in ways you never expected, you become weaker and more debilitated. The trick is to pretend that you are stronger than your weakest joint. The balls of your feet, for example, go bald--the cushioning on them diminishes--and long distance running and walking becomes problematic....I feel that if I ever get lung cancer or liver cirrhosis, I will have deserved it. But bald feet balls are completely undeserved. God doesn't punish you for your vices, he just punishes you for your existence. Our drunken stepfather who art in heaven.

My skin could kill me. Seems appropriate, we've had a terrible relationship. But I keep catching it before it goes invasive, so not likely.

My boobs could kill me. I could envision it happening thusly: my insurance company won't pay for a followup PET CT scan...unless I have bad liver enzyme levels in my blood labs, feel new lumps in my breasts, or start vomiting blood...i.e. advanced metastasis. Now I've worked the system to arrange my post-treatment scan in January, but after that, who knows. But then would it really be my boobs killing me, or the insurance company? They're in collusion. Mom's boobs killed her 4 years after she figured out they were in mutiny.

Save second base! It was truly tragic. I have a magnificent rack--legendary--and now it's scarred.

But what would be truly weird is for a body part I no longer have to kill me. My thyroid is gone but I am stuck with a low-but-stable thyroid cancer cell count in my blood stream, and it won't be treated again, so cancer is a chronic condition for me. For life. I wouldn't be surprised if it set up camp and blossomed to a thrush throughout my entire freakin' body.

But what may truly kill me is when the economic system fails, including distribution systems, and I don't have enough canned goods and ammo to barter for Synthroid. Once bipartisan greed and stupidity throws us back into the Stone Age, I'm dead within a couple of months. As is everyone else who is medication dependent.

In that case, it would be a death by missing body part in collusion with pols and Walls. Thanks @$$holes.

I'll never understand why Professor Althouse didn't blog her mammogram. When Althouse had her bout with cancer earlier this year, she kept mum.

She says that this blog is her whole life. And, it's sad ---the missed opportunity to give readers an inside glimpse into the mysteries of the medical world from the ground floor, and what it's like to undergo treatment, from a patient's perspective.

The only bona-fide affliction Althouse will admit to was her "Walking Pneumonia"...when she confessed to overdramatic coughing spells in the middle of a lecture to thankless students, who brooked no tolerance for such unprofessional histrionics.

But other than that, we are to assume Althouse is full of vigor, and since becoming a blogger, has never felt a more robust in her life.

There was a merchant in Baghdad who sent his servant to market to buy provisions and in a little while the servant came back, white and trembling, and said, Master, just now when I was in the marketplace I was jostled by a woman in the crowd and when I turned I saw it was Death that jostled me. She looked at me and made a threatening gesture; now, lend me your horse, and I will ride away from this city and avoid my fate. I will go to Samarra and there Death will not find me. The merchant lent him his horse, and the servant mounted it, and he dug his spurs in its flanks and as fast as the horse could gallop he went. Then the merchant went down to the market-place and he saw me standing in the crowd and he came to me and said, Why did you make a threatening gesture to my servant when you saw him this morning? That was not a threatening gesture, I said, it was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Baghdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.

kentuckyliz said... It isn't the Big H. He's got colon cancer but he can't quite bring himself to say it straight out like that. It takes time.

Too much steak in the go-go Reagan 80s.

Many "lifestyle" activist groups wish to cast cancer as purely a matter of right-wrong food consumption and "banning" various perceived environmental threats. And the media loves to publicize each claim as gospel. "Will brocolli save us all from cancer??" "Could it be a high fiber diet will block most cancers?" "Does a nuclear power plant in your state mean you will die a horrible death from cancer and not the radiation-spewing 9 coal plants???...Possibly".

We want control, but aside from smoking and heavy drinking, cancer is mostly outside our control. A function of treacherous genes.

Nor has "high technology" significantly enhanced cancer survival rates outside certain blood diseases. It HAS prolonged the time it takes to die from them.

And all the money dumped into it since Nixon started the War on cancer? Well, it has benefited us if you believe in transfer of taxpayer dollars to the wealthy does benefit us all through "trickledown" and boosting the fortunes of the Hawaii conference industry, Big Pharma, and various Mercedes and BMW dealerships...

I had a tumor on my arm. My now ex-wife saw it and yelled at me that I hadn't eaten enough brocolli. Damn, that was one mean, stupid broad. Thanks for the sympathy and support in my time of need, you harridan. Hope I can return the favor eventually.

But, on the other hand, I married her. Like the democrats nominating their favorite jihadi, marry in haste, repent at leisure, I suppose.

I once asked an oncologist "If you had to have cancer, what would be the best type to have?" After furrowing his brow for a minute, he responded: "Let me put it to you this way. Cancer is never a GOOD thing to have."

Cedarford, I didn't say not enough broccoli, but too much steak. There's some scientific epidemiological evidence for that. But PJ doesn't seem to mind the price of lifestyle choices.

You're telling me cancer is a mystery. I live healthy and am an athlete and have had three primary cancers, perhaps you missed that factoid. I am a rare and wonderful creature. My long-experiences onc docs and nurses can only think of maybe two people in their entire careers who had three primary cancers (no mets).

The technology and the meds have improved and impacted survival. Mom's boobs killed her but shortly after that hormone receptors were figgered out and we have lovely things like tamoxifen and aromatase inhibitors. The HER2-neu factor was discovered and Herceptin developed as a treatment. I take both of these, and mom probably had those factors. I'm just on the lucky side of the science timeline.

Actually Dad just died a long lingering decline-death with Parkinson's...not sure which would be worse, Mom's painful death from cancer or his many years of debility with Parkinson's until he couldn't speak or swallow any more.

I just want good drugs, no matter what. My sis, my health care POA knows that. Drug me up enough to kill the pain even if it accidentally kills me.

Colon cancer sucks because the treatment is stressful on the GI tract and you quit eating and waste away. Sorry PJ.

Due to my breach of contract with "Little Babuilder and his two pals" as it relates to what I promised when we were fifteen, regarding the quantity and variety of activity they could expect with womankind in the future, I suppose it would be only too fitting if one of those organs took me out.